The Manhattan Project is a low-stakes, nonthreatening place for actors and playwrights to meet and work together.
Based
on the Theatre Lab model taught at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama
and inspired by The Brooklyn Generator in New York,
The Manhattan Project wants to introduce Cleveland actors and
playwrights to each other by organizing a bi-monthly production of brand
new 10-minute plays.
Participating artists will meet early
in the month and will be broken into teams, each with one playwright.
The playwright will then be given a writing prompt to write a new
10-minute play based on the prompt and including all the team's actors.
The rest of the evening the team members will get to know each other
and get a feel for each other's skills and voices.
The teams will reconvene later in the month to perform these plays for each other.
These
10-minute plays are not an end in themselves. Through these small
collaborations we hope to build relationships between the two most
vulnerable artists in theatre; the actors who put themselves on stage
and the playwrights who pour themselves onto the page. Perhaps these
10-minute plays will grow into longer works or maybe these
collaborations will become partnerships on larger projects.